Metroid Prime Hunters: A Call to Arms
by Lord Agamemnon
Summary: In answer to an enigmatic message, Samus gets caught up in a growing conspiracy where a madman with a Metroid Queen at his disposal is pulling all the strings. Rated for (future) violence and mild language.
1. Prologue

I don't own Metroid. I don't own Samus, I don't own Adam, I don't own everything but a few original characters, who, being products of my imagination, I do have control of.

PROLOGUE.

It was around 2030 by the official Galactic calendar that I received the call.

The official calendar was not the prominent one, of course. Nothing with "official" tagged on it was very commonly used. Much like how English was supposedly declared the "official" language of hundreds of star systems, yet each planet had its own dialect or subset language, the galaxy was riddled with numerous calendars with origins lying in ethnicity, religion, or historical causes. The official calendar was used mostly in the idle Inner Worlds, where delegates from across the galaxy came to squabble pointlessly about laws that were rarely enforced on ninety percent of the worlds humanity had colonized and were wholly unrecognized by other space-faring races, such as the Space Pirates. As an old friend of mine would put it, no one gave two craps over whether the Preservation of Submicroscopic Organisms law was approved by some bogus congressional body consisting of old idiots who couldn't tie their shoes without aid of a machine or android.

By the calendar of the Chozo, the one I had been raised with and come to know, which was oriented by the day the Great Prophet O-Seen'ia brought peace to the people and formed the Band of Races, it was around 51790, of the Second Age. By Space Pirate reckoning, it was likely 1872, or by the calendar of A.D., 16743. Regardless, to me, it was simply "that year". The year everything changed. The year that altered my course in career and life. I have often resented that year, and yet had that year never occurred I would no longer be here to write this. I, Samus Aran.

Some have considered me a legend. Hero? I doubt it. If my actions have ever been driven by morality, I cannot recall it. I work for money. Simple as that. If anyone should anyone think otherwise, I assure them any hints of nobility are not intended. I am not entirely amoral, but nor am I an ethicist by any stretch.

I had just cleaned up things on the devastated Zebes and at the time was in cryo-stasis on my ship. I had instructed the ship's AI to travel to the Wastes, a fifty-light-year emptiness devoid of any celestial objects, or anything at all, save for the occasional stray asteroid. At least, that was the commonly accepted belief. I knew better.

Situated near the dead center of these supposedly desolate Wastes was a single star, which I had decided to dub Eden. A large white dwarf, it was far too small to appear on distant Scanners, and apparently the human explorers had managed to overlook it. It was orbited by a single watery planet, habitable for human life without Environment Suits. Such worlds were a rarity, even an anomaly. Ironic, don't you think, that one of the few worlds hospitable for humans should be commonly deemed as nonexistent? Still, that did provide me one fortune: a safe haven, a retreat, a place to call home. The planet was littered with ancient ruins, built in a style remindful of the Chozo's, which brought back memories of my youth. For this reason and for its sheer beauty, I called the world Tree of Life. After my recent exploits, I felt it necessary to take a quick breather and was returning here.

I awoke in a Hibernation pod, one of many that lined the cylindrical wall of the Cryo-Chamber, with a light buzzing in my head. Such aches were common side-effects of long periods of time spent Frozen. Most modern cryo models had overcome this, as had mine. The fact that I _did _have an aching could mean one of two things. One, my pod was malfunctioning. Two, I had been awoken abruptly in response to either a transmission…or trouble- preferably the former. Trouble was the last thing I needed.

Even so, I'd learned over time to always assume trouble, and so I quickly climbed out of the pod, dressed myself, did a standard Medical check and hurried to the cockpit. No alarms were active- that was a relief. I settled in at a chair near the viewscreen and assumed control of the ship. A blue transparent sphere floated above the control panel- a hologram. Text in red zoomed through it center, accompanied by voicing.

"YOU HAVE RECEIVED 1 MESSAGE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW IT?" The computer spoke perfectly without any hint of emotion or identity. I had tried customizing it once, and the result had been awful. I preferred the generic AI program to a more characterized one—at least a generic AI didn't bicker constantly and criticize my every action.

"Origin, please," said Samus.

"PROCESSING…PROCESSING…SYSTEM: sol. PLANET: terra. MOON: luna. RECEIVED 4 STANDARD MINUTES AGO. APPARENT TIME OF SENDING: 1 STANDARD YEAR AGO. WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW IT?"

"…Yes, please." A year. For a message from Luna, that was…odd. Most messages would take decades to travel such a distance. It occurred to me that this would imply whoever had sent this had sent as a priority signal. Someone, somewhere, needed to tell me something urgently.

"AUDIO OR VISUAL?"

"…Visual."

The sphere morphed into a flat screen, on which materialized a face I immediately associated with that of Vice Admiral Adam Malkovich. When first I had met Adam, he had been a down-on-his-luck Navy career had taken a pitfall after the first Zebes invasion. As now it is well known, the mission had been a disaster for the Navy and had cost them a small armada. After such a costly defeat, the senior brass needed a scapegoat, and who better to blame than the one officer who had the bad luck of surviving? You'll never hear them talking about the blunders of Admiral Fitzgerald or the incompetence of Adm. Johansen because they're _dead_. I've seen the records—Adam (he wished for me to call him by his first name) was not the one at fault.

Adam spoke. "Samus Aran. It's been a while since we last spoke. You do remember me, don't you? I wish we could have talked under lighter circumstances—I still owe you for defending me before Zebes. However, the situation is urgent. I cannot inform you wholly of what has occurred until we- meaning High Command- are certain you are in no position to divulge what you have learned without permit." He grinned very, very slightly. "I can tell you only this- there is a reward, one-point-five mil, if you can pull off what we seek to ask of you. A message will be sent out to all registered bounty hunters soon- it took effort for me to send you a transmission in advance. I'm only allowed half a minute, so I have to hurry. They'll all be flocking to Earth imminently, so you would do well to hurry. And don't do me any favors this time. Adam Malkovich, signing off." The brief hologram vanished and the sphere rematerialized.

I stared at where the hologram had been without uttering a word. Then I said, promptly, "Computer, set a course for Luna."


	2. Chapter 1: Threat

Chapter 1: Threat

Adam knew Samus's ship well. It was uniquely designed, with both unsurpassed efficiency and an elaborate appearance, conspicuous in color scheme and shape. Standing with his arms behind his back in the bay of the _G.F.S. Tyr II_, named for the infamous ship which met its end on the cursed world of Aether, it took no straining of his eye to recognize the _Hunter_ as it settled down among hundreds of other ships launching, landing, and under repair. He walked nonchalantly down the bay to meet the ship as it arrived.

Samus walked out clad in her Suit without a helmet, and seemed abruptly shocked to see Adam waiting for her. The officer grinned. "You have a certain way of keeping us in suspense, Samus. You really 'ought to start sending us a response, or at least a way of assuring us you got our message."

The former laughed. "Me? So now _I _am keeping _you_ in the dark? Hey, at least _I_ didn't send you some melodramatic call to make a journey half way across the galaxy without clarifying what the hell it is _I_ wanted."

"Well, then," said Malkovich, "I 'oughtn't to keep you in the dark any longer, should I? Very well, if you insist, follow me. After all, that's just like you: get to the meat of things, none of the chit-chat." Adam turned and walked across the spacious bay to an upward ramp. Samus followed as Adam led her through a labyrinth of hallways and corridors that were as well lit as in a horror movie, to a circular auditorium which received its only light from a hologram hovering in its center. The holo depicted a long-necked, teethed monster that was easily ugly as sin and worse.

"I'm sure you're wholly familiar with the Metroid Queen," said Adam to a wordless Samus, who was still unenlightened as to why she was here and didn't like it. She stared at the projection as if trying to figure out why her acquaintance would be showing her this. Malkovich continued, "As more recent studies have revealed, Metroid Queens do not, in fact, give birth to their young, as we had assumed. In fact, they are completely sterile and immobile.

"Instead, once their life cycle is complete, a "Birth Metroid", as we have come to call the Metroid's reproduction factor, that has passed heat will absorb genetic material from the Queen's corpse and assume its role."

"You've lost me a good ten times so far. What is it you're trying to tell me?"

"There are two factors necessary to create the ultimate biological weapon: Queen DNA and a Birth Metroid. A potentially hostile party has the latter in hand."

Samus was beginning to understand. "And you think they're going to come for the other."

Adam smiled for a second, and then resumed his neutral gesture. "That is correct, _Milady_. Don't worry; all Queen DNA we are aware of is tightly guarded. Nonetheless, we feel the threat must be neutralized urgently. I would ask you to please understand the magnitude of this; please understand what will transpire if a mistake is made. There are too many fools in the world to keep this in hand forever."

"Great—you've just left one question. The Metroids are dead."

"I'm afraid you are mistaken. I suppose you don't pay much attention to conspiracy theory, do you?" Samus took interest. "We've been covering this up for a while, but we still have a single Metroid left from before the Pirates made their first assault. From it, we have cloned plenty of others. Apparently, they all have the DNA to become a Birth Metroid, but it was only active in one of them. We had this one captive aboard the original _Tyr_. We'd assumed it had been killed along with the marines, but we assumed mistakenly, for six months later we received an anonymous and untraceable transmission."

"Perhaps I could see it?" asked Samus.

"Indeed," said Adam. "Computer, display Transmission 92187042."

"Please provide password to continue."

Adam gave Samus a grin. "Aran."

"Password acknowledged. Please provide password level two." _Just how many passwords are there?_ wondered Samus. It occurred to her that this had to be a very heavily guarded transmission, full of firewalls. How important could it be?

"Prime."

"Password acknowledged. Please provide password level three."

"Why the hell are you hacking these files?" Samus laughed. Adam gave her a look, and she realized that anyone background noise would disrupt the procedure.

"Please resubmit password."

"Why the hell are you hacking these files?"  
"Password acknowledged. Please stand level with the hologram to continue." Adam did so. A laser shot from the wall into his eye. The computer continued. "Blink twice." Again, Adam did so. "Access granted."

The hologram assumed the shape of a shadowed head. It spoke, so abruptly that Samus jumping slightly. Adam didn't notice.

"Attention Galactic Federation officials. Your efforts to keep safe your Metroid program have been in vain. I myself have recovered one of your precious Birth Metroids and intend to use it for my own means. I have cut off all communication between the planet Gearon and the rest of the galaxy, and if you wish to regain contact with your lost colony, you are to surrender all Metroid Queen DNA you have or have access to. Failure to comply will result in the nuclear destruction of the Gearon colony, and with it all hope of ever encountering and studying the ecosystems there. You will have a standard decade to comply. This concludes our transmission." The hologram vanished suddenly into nothing.

Samus stared at where the hologram had been. Adam looked at her. "I suppose now you understand?"


	3. Chapter 2: Equipment

Chapter 2: Equipment

"I have already assembled a strike team to accompany you," said Adam, guiding his visitor to the ship's armory. "I assure you, they are the finest in the Corps. Brilliant tacticians, brutal fighters, obedient to the end. They have all—"

"Point taken," said Samus.

"We have also granted the swiftest ship in the fleet to your command. The _Silent_ had originally been intended for hit-and-run assaults, and can travel up to 40-optic. That should get you to Gearon in four standard years. Since the ship is small- it could be packed into _Tyr_'s bay granted it was utterly empty- it has only one lifeboat and only for stasis tubes. That means someone will there will always be at least one person awake at a time."

"So I only have four people?"

"Don't worry, you'll be perfectly armed. You will have three nukes, all of which can be loaded into your beam cannon. Those are _last resort_, of course. Any use of atomics, by anyone, no matter their rank, will result in an automatic court martial, so you need a damn good excuse before you use them. Since you aren't military personnel, I had to go all the way up the chain of command, to the senior brass, to get you cleared. They don't doubt your obvious skill, of course, but they do doubt your judgment. You are very independent, Samus, which is as far from a military attitude as you can get. They actually had the oldest man with enough authority to sign the agreement, since he'll likely retire before you get back. So anyway, you'll also get a flamethrower- beam cannon compatible-, an ice beam, and enough missiles to cut a valley deeper than the Canyon Gaforge into solid diamond. Aha- here's the armory. You can pick out anything else you might want here."

She took five large rockets bound together by metal from a rack. "Super missiles?"

"Correct. We have a total of sixty here. You can take as many or as few as you desire."

Samus loaded each missile into her cannon. Her beam cannon could hold four beam cannons, up to a hundred eighty missiles, and twenty five super missiles at the moment. She grabbed super missiles until she was full. "Any beams?" she asked.

"We have an annihilator beam, a copy of the one you acquired on Aether. Unfortunately, I cannot wholly assure you of its ability to function properly. The technology you brought back was utterly _mosium_." The word had originally been part of an older Chozo dialect and had, over time, become English. It was one of their many words for alien, and meant literally an utterly unknown being, one which evolved in a different environment, and up to then had never interacted with their species. Though it was meant to serve only as a noun (the proper adjective would have been _mosi_), through misinterpretation it became much like our word for alien, which could be used also as an adjective. There was but one Chozo word referring to the foreign that was of a higher degree, that being _O_, or god. "We tried are best to mimic the weapon accurately, but it was without knowing for what purpose anyone of its parts served. In addition, we did not have knowledge of some of the materials used in the original and had no choice but to improvise with what we had."

"It…has been tested, I assume?"

"Yes, with mixed results. On an earlier model, the figures are as follows: 80 of the time it worked perfectly. 20 of the time it shut off…and, with one of our earliest prototypes, it exploded. Fortunately, with this new version, currently untested, we believe we have cleaned out all of the bugs."

"I hope so. Is this the only beam you have available?"

"We do have another…but it is even more experimental than the annihilator, far more dangerous to use. People have to come to call it the 'Zapper', and it's a suitable nickname. Some others have called it the "plasma blaster", usually jokingly. Basically, it throws lightning at its target, from which another bolt jumps. The bolt strikes the next target, and so forth. It can be assigned as many as eight targets at a time. When it runs out of targets its leaps at the nearest conductor and dies."

"I'll take it."

"What about the annihilator?"

"Does it work with GF guns?"

"Yes, in theory. It's dynamite on paper, of course, but…"

"I'll give it to one of my team, then. I'm confident they could put it to as good of use as I. Hell, I never really liked that the thing anyway."


End file.
